How to prune and care for the Mighty Butterfly Bush, Buddleia
The butterfly bush or buddleia is a staple in many New England gardens, used to balance a garden's symmetry, attract butterflies and hummingbirds, and sometimes can be used as summer windbreaks. Butterfly bushes come in almost every color and offer a majestic ambience in the hot summer months as they move with the warm breezes off the ocean, showing off their silvery under leaf dresses as they dance to the rhythm of the wind.
Butterfly bushes swaying in the wind appear feminine and fragile with their feathery spikes of tasty colorful treats; the name "butterfly bush" connotes a dilettantish air to their culture and survival rate, but they are masquerading big time behind their "I don't know, I'm only a girl" name. The common name is a total misnomer and should have been the "Mighty Butterfly bush," at least. Buddleia is their Latin name. Here is how to prune and care for the mighty Butterfly bush, Buddleia.
Does this Spark an idea?
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
-
1
You really can't kill a buddleia. They are faithful and sturdy enough to survive many months of below freezing temperature without snow to insulate their roots. Ours looked as though they were dead after a particularly cold winter with no snow, but not so. After a good pruning, that time by my son-in-law, they came back to life to grow at least 7-8 feet in the air that summer. They send up suckers, or offspring, every year to ensure substantial regrowth.
-
2
But butterfly bushes need pruning in the early spring to keep them from over-powering your garden and full of their butterfly and hummingbird attracting flowers all summer long. After just pruning the two in our garden, the difficulty level of this article took some hard consideration.
The older I get, the harder and more challenging pruning the buddleia can be. I've decided that I really can't handle pruning with the lopping shears a branch anymore than one inch wide. So this year, I was able to prune them down to about 3 feet, 18 inches would be perfect, but the branches are too hard to cut. Even though there are green leaves on the branches, prune them hard. They love it.
-
-
3
As far as fertilizer goes, I don't give them anything more than a once a year sprinkling of lime, their roots grow deep and need little water in the summer, so buddleia are perfect plantings for water-conservation. And faithfully, butterflies and hummingbirds return to the 8 or more foot tall bushes every summer. You can even mark the seasons of different butterflies by watching the bushes. First, the cabbage butterfly, or smaller white ones, then the Painted Lady butterfly, and lastly, and the largest of all, Monarch with the beautiful yellow and black striped wings. Hummingbirds, thankfully, buzz the buddleias all summer. That's a Painted Lady in our garden on the purple butterfly bush in the first photo.
-
1
Tips & Warnings
So, prune the butterfly bush hard and watch it grow all summer.
- Photo Credit writers own
